-Strange Brew-

The Centurion was right.  He was bat shit crazy.  Patrick stared at the oddly sinister arrangement of ancient relics and modern laboratory equipment spread on the table before him.  Two books lay at his elbow, one of them open.  The closed one was a Latin dictionary with its English translation, a source that would not have been necessary had he studied harder and stayed longer at his education.  The dead language was still mandatory in the Scottish highlands through secondary school but Patrick was far from proficient with it.

The open tome, entirely written in Latin, was one of the ancient volumes Patrick had purchased from Delria, entitled  Druidic Potions, Elixirs, Tonics and Brews Distilled from the Arcane.  The nine page chapter’s title was Distillation of Mistlock, an Infusion Evoking Visions Beyond the Veil.  At least Patrick thought that’s what it read, if his translation was accurate.  Or it might just as well say Brew Your Own Poisons for Shits and Giggles.  Yet he was unable to refrain from at least attempting to distill the concoction, for the mad dreams he’d experienced since childhood had only increased in frequency since his stint in the hoosegow.

The night terrors were bloody glimpses of ancient battles on long forgotten vistas, but little more than hazy images, echoing sounds and hints of grisly smells remaining to him upon awakening.  PerhapsDruid mysticism could transfigure the shards of his dreams into discernable, comprehensible visions and he would risk much to ken what underpinned his nightmares.  “What the hell.  It’s not going to work anyway,” Patrick said to himself and picked up the celtic dagger and a holly berry to begin the distillation.



The result of the three day recipe, after a convoluted series of brews, filtrations, dries, rinses and a final boil, was supposed to be “like beholding a loch on a starry night, a thick, though discreet mist swirling within the icy waters”.  Patrick had managed a blob of brown muck, a viscous, indigo sludge, a clear liquid that smelled vaguely of cat piss and , this one, a frothing , pale green mess that spewed over the tabletop, the culmination of his first five attempts.  He sighed, but began the process for the sixth time.

The next morning, the Celt was in the training ring Lester had set up in an unused bedroom of Patrick’s suite, sparring with the Centurion.  “Tight mind,” Lester hissed.  “It’s right here where you started squirrel hunting against Angelica and she fucking kicked the shit out of you.  You’re not going to repeat that mistake.  Now do it again.  Tight mind.  Up, over… and down.  That’s it. Good. Very good.  Again.”

“Christ, Lester.  Why are you pushing me so hard?  The bloody suits are dropping me in a slaughterhouse in Las Vegas where it’s a spin of the wheel who comes out the victor.  Don’t you see?  The lot of these buggers are done with me and they want me beat down so badly I’ll never crawl back into their ring again.  I’d wager our rat in the XWF has his own cronies who are booking my matches.  They know we’re onto them and they figure it’s best we’re taught a lesson, sending me to hospital and leaving you without a fighter.”

“Keltic warrior spirit my ass,” Lester growled.  “So you’ve just had your head handed to you on a platter by Vaughn and can’t claim you ain’t ever been pinned no more.  Tough shit.  Maybe the rat and his mischief of similar vermin are trying to put you in a body cast, pitting you against three solid wrestlers to get you out the way.  Poor, wee bairn.  Isn’t this the quest you’ve been looking for?  You gotta beat the world to win your title and bring down the fiends infesting the XWF.  Besides, tempus porco nihil est?”

Patrick straightened from his crouch, a bemused grin on his face.  “I had no idea you spoke Latin.”

“I don’t, you idiot.  Saw it painted on a gym wall and I asked somebody what it meant.  She tells me it means what is time to a pig.  I took it for a personal motto and you should too.”

That’s it, Patrick thought to himself.  Tempus, meaning time, was everywhere in the recipe.  Yet he was thinking in the context of the modern divisions of seconds, minutes and hours.  But the Druids had no such timepieces lest the crudest of implements.  Was he reckoning time differently than would an ancient celt?  He sighed, realizing he had a lot of research ahead of him.

“Alright, alright,” Patrick said, resignedly.  “What next, boss?”

Lester glared at him furiously, having noted the brief and distracted expression that had flitted over Patrick’s visage before the query.  “What the hell is up with you, man?  Dreaming about those nubile curves packed on your last opponent’s bones above the pretty, little feet that nearly kicked your brains out?  Tight mind, you witless tomcat.  Now if your jockstrap isn’t under too much strain, it’s time to work.”

Patrick’s research into the Druidic concept of time went no further than another book in his private collection, for there was no need for additional references.  He took from the volume the celtic notion of the proper moment for all actions in the world.  The ancient, Druidic  wizards did not advise their celtic kings of the day and hour for a particular battle, but how to recognize the proper moment.  Patrick began his next attempt of the distillation with that concept foremost in his mind and was surprised how readily the proper moment for each step was revealed as his task progressed.

After eighteen hours, rather than three days, Patrick’s mistlock sat on the table in a pyrex beaker before him.  He’d finished his training for the day an hour ago and knew he was free for some time with the Centurion off on some errand in the investigation of the XWF’s financial and PR woes, but still he hesitated.

The strange brew was an admixture of a clear liquid, smelling like new fallen snow, with tendrils of mist drifting through it.  The bloody stuff was so cold, the air over the beaker smoked.  It was eerie and utterly surreal, the whole blasted thing, from his dreams, to the bookshop, to the result of this experiment and Patrick’s trepidation to take the last step stayed his hand for another hour.

“Well, lad,” Patrick said to no one save himself, “Either it will shatter your mind, kill you outright, or do nothing at all.  Or perhaps it will bring you the answers you have sought your whole life.  Is it worth the risk?”  He stretched his thickly muscled arm to a side table and pulled the last of the Glenfiddich in a small tumbler to him and set it beside the beaker.  “See you all in hell,” the Celt murmured, lifted the mistlock and threw it back, then chased the frozen fire with the warming scotch.  In the span of three heartbeats, Patrick was dead to the world.

The swordsman, harnessed in iron studded, leather armor and a bronze torc about his throat, stood at the left hand of his king, staring out over the field of battle.  Only an hour before, the broad vale was awash in spring’s sunlight, yet now the expanse was a seething cauldron of indigo and crimson as the armies collided under a roiling sky of uncanny, black clouds.  The swordsman kenned dark arcana was at play when his enemies emerged from a screen of mist on the left flank where none should have formed, and the eerie chants of his king’s wizards rose all about him, invoking counterspells.

“It be not Balor,” the panting messenger kneeling before the king proclaimed.  This army of Nait is led by a black knight in an antlered helm, though Balor’s greatest wizard is at his side.”

“It matters little who accosts my vanguard,” the king intoned gravely.  “They are all Irish fiends that seek to drive us from our sovereignty over the Scottish isles.  I shall make no retreat from this field.  Carry my words to my captains and tell them their king’s own knights and armsmen shall join the battle within the hour.”

“Aye, my liege,” the messenger replied as he rose.

The king turned to the swordsman and grimly said, “Lord Cuilthe.  You and your company must find this black knight on the battlefield and destroy him.  Do so and this melee becomes a rout for I deem it a conjuring of Balor’s wizard and through it, Nait’s warriors draw strength.”

“ Conjur or nay, my liege,” Cuilthe replied, “I do as you command.  Ward yourself well on the field, for you will be marked.  I will return to you at battle’s end when our victory is secured.”

Little more than an hour had passed when the swordsman cried out, the shards of his shattered bastard sword raking at his eyes, the weapon broken under the heavy blow of the black knight’s iron mace.  The knight roared with mocking laughter and bellowed, “Aye, you Scottish cur.  Squeal like a lamb as you are slaughtered.  I’ve drawn your one fang and now you shall die.”  The black knight closed upon the swordsman, his mace held high, aiming the stroke that would obliterate his unarmed foe.

Cuilthe crouched, his open hands sslightly raised from his sides, awaiting the proper moment.  That moment came when the knight lifted his mace a bit higher overhead, assuring his blow would have all of his magically enhanced might behind the killing stroke.  The swordsman sprang, one arm clenching the knight’s forearm and the other cupping his elbow.  With a great lurch, Cuilthe drove the arm back, the joint of the shoulder disintegrating in the grapple.

The mace fell from the knight’s nerveless fingers as the swordsman simultaneously dropped to one knee at his foe’s right side and jerked his enemy’s body sideways, wrenching the arm against its torn socket.  The arcane conjuration sprawled across Cuilthe’s muscled thigh, the small of its back flexed deeply.  Cuilthe’s left arm clamped over the creatures own thighs and his right across its shoulders  and the inexorable press of the swordsman’s grapple slowly bent the evil wizard’s summoning in twain.

With the sound like a tree branch breaking in a high wind, the knight’s back gave way and a greenish ichor trickled from its mouth that was splayed wide in a silent scream.  Cuilthe shoved the obscene corpse off his knee and quickly rose, snatching up his broken foe’s mace.  All about him, the battlefield had grown silent, the eyes of every warrior turned to the result of the single combat.  The swordsman stepped forward, placing his armored boot upon the black knight’s neck and slowly lifted his arms to either side.  Above his head, his wrists crossed, one fist clenched round the haft of the iron mace.  The swordsman’s triumphant roar shook the broad vale for a long moment, before fading into echos like distant thunder.

It wasn’t thunder, but rather the tumbler, now emptied of the shot of Glenfiddich, rolling across the tile floor that Patrick heard, the glass coming to rest only seconds later.  He stared at the tumbler on the floor, realizing no more than heartbeats had passed from when he drained it, dropped it and it rolled to a stop.  Yet his experience was that of some hours on an ancient highland battlefield in a long forgotten age in which Irish and Scottish celts did battle with swords and sorcery for the dominion of the isles.

Patrick shakily pushed his chair away from the table and stood, the experience of the vision in its clarity and detail having greatly muddled his thoughts and senses.  He was also quite fatigued, as if he’d actually fought with the black knight, yet he knew he was not Cuilthe.  It was as if he shared some warrior template with the swordsman and those cast from its mold were able to impart their wisdom across the span of time.  Or, and more likely, he'd totally lost his shit.

The Celt wandered through his suite, assuring himself he’d returned to reality and warily observed his surroundings or the impressions his senses made of them, but after an hour, his trepidation faded away and he knew he must find his bed.  What if the hallucinogen he’d brewed up had torn some veil between sanity and madness?  Would what he dreamed tonight be the simple expression of his subconcious mind or something far more sinister

The Celt lay on his back between cool sheets under a light comforter, staring at the ceiling.  He closed his eyes for a moment with a deep, shuddering and trepid breath.  Then he opened them again and sunlight was filtering through the shutters of his bedroom window in the dawn of a new day.  He’d only just dressed when he heard the front door open and close, followed by a familiar, tuneless whistle.

“Lester?” Patrick called.  “That you?”

“No, you mullet head.  It’s your worst nightmare.”

“I didn’t expect you until Saturday.  What did you find out?”

“Not much.  A few names, a few shady circumstances.  I’ll fill you in as we spar.  Get a move on.”

Patrick grinned a little before he called, “Be right there.  I think I’ve got an idea for a grapple I’d like to work out.  The opponent ends up on his back on my knee so it’s a test of his core against my arms.”

MegaRing Podcast with Cherry Vixen, October 11th, 2022

“Greetings, once again, all you Xwf fanatics,” purrs the sultry, black haired, pale blue eyed woman on the screen in a shoulderless, backless, red carpet runway gown slit from neck to navel and ankle to hip.  “Tonight, I have to bring you a sad update concerning a wrestler I thought would be a rising star in the XWf.  I’m sure you remember him, the gorgeous , blue eyed, blonde haired hunk of man meat I introduced you to some weeks ago.  It seems my prognostication was quite premature, my prodigy failing to collect a single victory in his first three sanctioned matches, the last versus the incredible Angelica Vaughn, suffering a pin after her flashing feet pummeled him into submission.  It seems his only triumph was over Steve Sayor on Ringside Wrapup, apparently brutalizing that dottering, dapper dandy of banal blithering  when the Celt tossed him across the radio studio.  Having listened to the replay, I can’t say Stievie didn’t deserve a strident admonition, but really, how can I support this hulking stud when he thrashes old men and considers bashing an opponent with a morning star like he did in his last match?  What happened to honor and glory, I ask you?”

The alluring woman strides to an austere office chair, settling herself comfortably and crossing her long, shapely legs, revealing an astonishing length of bronzed skin as her slit skirt parts in her repose.  Her full lips crease into a petulant pout before she continues her husky recrimination.  “I still have some little hope for him, though I fear he will never be more than fodder to pad the records of more gifted wrestlers climbing their way up the ranks to championships.  Still, he is rather pretty, so for all you ladies out there and whoever else fancies masculine muscle, I present the Celt.  Hello there, Patrick Johns.  I’m Cherry Vixen.  How’s it hanging this morning?”

The Celt but stares at her through the remote camera for a long moment before shaking his head, the screen superimposed above and to the right of Cherry on the podcast view.  His little box suddenly goes black and the feed now goes full screen onto Cherry laughing softly into her cupped hand before she professionally clears her throat and looks into camera two.  “Well, you got a little peek at that beautiful barbarian before his craven disappearance.  I assure you, that was not technical difficulties.  If I was a betting woman, and you can rest assured I am, take my advice and wager on Kido, Madison or Buster Gloves against my pretty, little Celt in the squared circle, and just watch his cute, tight… well, enjoy his next defeat, relishing his looks as compensation for his meager wrestling sskills.  Moving on to a more interesting story…”

Lester redundantly flipped off the monitor, the power cord dangling from Patrick’s fingers,  and stared at the black screen for some time with his lips twisted into a grimace.  “That could have gone better,” the Centurion muttered.  “You think that appearance is gonna sell tickets?”

Patrick’s gaze, unfocused and a long way away, escorted his bizarre reply, reciting, “Accomplishment is not in the achievement, but in the journey.  The path I now tread is but a tenebrous diversion from the radient byway I must soon travel.  Doom awaits, and I shall not shirk its appointment.”

“Fucking hell,” Lester murmured, burying his face in his palms.  “I’ve hitched my wagon to a madman whose sure enough gonna end my career once again.  Maybe one of these three fighters or the rat will put us out of our misery right soon.”  Lester turned his head to stare at the Celt for a long moment before he said, “Nope, you lunatic.  No way in hell I’m gonna let you screw this up.  If you wanna play the unimpeachable, valiant hero bullshit, fine by me, but by damn, you ain’t gonna look like the bloody idiot you are the next time you’re sposta give an interview or promote your next bout.  I’m your manager and from now on, I’m your mouthpiece.  You sit there with your trap shut and let me piss the diss.”  If Patrick noticed Lester stand and wander away, there was no change in his melancholy visage to prove it, caressing the silver, Celtic cross at the hollow of his bullishly muscled  throat.



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